Home » Posts tagged 'of two minds' (Page 19)
Tag Archives: of two minds
Before You Tell Me What You “Know,” Tell Me Your Sources
Before You Tell Me What You “Know,” Tell Me Your Sources We can no longer trust data and conclusions being published as impartial by institutions that were once trustworthy. When someone says they “know” what’s happening on the ground in Syria, how can we assess the validity of their claim to knowledge, i.e. their claim to […]
Kafka’s Nightmare Emerges: China’s “Social Credit Score”
Kafka’s Nightmare Emerges: China’s “Social Credit Score” China is creating Kafka’s nightmare world as the perfection of centralized control of its citizenry. China is rapidly building out a Total Surveillance State on a scale that far surpasses any government surveillance program in the West. The scope of this surveillance is so broad and pervasive that […]
Taking the Pulse of a Weakening Economy
Taking the Pulse of a Weakening Economy Corporate buybacks provide the key analogy for the economy as a whole. Central banks have been running a grand experiment for 9 years, and now we’re about to find out if it succeeds or fails. For 9 unprecedented years, central banks have pushed the pedal of monetary stimulus […]
What Lies Beyond Capitalism and Socialism?
What Lies Beyond Capitalism and Socialism? The status quo, in all its various forms, is dominated by incentives that strengthen the centralization of wealth and power. As longtime readers know, my work aims to 1) explain why the status quo — the socio-economic-political system we inhabit — is unsustainable, divisive, and doomed to collapse under […]
Our Strange Attraction to Self-Destructive Behaviors, Choices and Incentives
Our Strange Attraction to Self-Destructive Behaviors, Choices and Incentives Self-destruction isn’t a bug, it’s a feature of our socio-economic system. The gravitational pull of self-destructive behaviors, choices and incentives is scale-invariant, meaning that we can discern the strange attraction to self-destruction in the entire scale of human experience, from individuals to families to groups to […]
The Genie’s Out of the Bottle: Eight Defining Trends Are Reversing
The Genie’s Out of the Bottle: Eight Defining Trends Are Reversing Though the Powers That Be will attempt to placate or suppress the Revolt of the Powerless, the genies of political disunity and social disorder cannot be put back in the bottle. The saying “the worm has turned” refers to the moment when the downtrodden […]
Were Trade Wars Inevitable?
Were Trade Wars Inevitable? Trade in which mobile capital is the comparative advantage is a system of Neocolonial exploitation of developing-world nations. Were trade wars inevitable? The answer is yes, due to the imbalances and distortions generated by financialization and central bank stimulus. Gordon Long and I peel the trade-war onion in a new video […]
Why Systems Fail
Why Systems Fail Since failing systems are incapable of structural reform, collapse is the only way forward. Systems fail for a wide range of reasons, but I’d like to focus on two that are easy to understand but hard to pin down. 1. Systems are accretions of structures and modifications laid down over time.Each layer […]
Playing for All the Marbles
Playing for All the Marbles Global Plunge Protection Teams must be ordering take-out food; every night is a long one now. The current stocks/bonds game is for all the marbles, by which I mean the status quo now depends on valuations and interest rates remaining near their current levels for the system to function. If […]
The Problem with a State-Cartel Economy: Prices Rise, Wages Don’t
The Problem with a State-Cartel Economy: Prices Rise, Wages Don’t The vise will tighten until something breaks. It could be the currency, it could be the political status quo, it could be the credit/debt system–or all three. The problem with an economy dominated by state-enforced cartels and quasi-monopolies is that prices rise (since cartels can […]
What If All the Cheap Stuff Goes Away?
What If All the Cheap Stuff Goes Away? Nothing stays the same in dynamic systems, and it’s inevitable that the current glut of low costs / cheap stuff will give way to scarcities that cannot be filled at current low prices. One of the books I just finished reading is The Fate of Rome: Climate, […]
15 Years of War: To Whose Benefit?
15 Years of War: To Whose Benefit? As for Iraq, the implicit gain was supposed to be access to Iraqi oil. Setting aside the 12 years of “no fly zone” air combat operations above Iraq from 1991 to 2003, the U.S. has been at war for almost 17 years in Afghanistan and 15 years in […]
Solutions Only Arise Outside the Status Quo
Solutions Only Arise Outside the Status Quo Solutions are only possible outside these ossified, self-serving centralized hierarchies. Correspondent Dan F. asked me to reprint some posts on solutions to the systemic problems I’ve outlined for years, most recently in How Much Longer Can We Get Away With It? and Checking In on the Four Intersecting […]
Is Profit-Maximizing Data-Mining Undermining Democracy?
Is Profit-Maximizing Data-Mining Undermining Democracy? If targeting political extremes generates the most profit, then that’s what these corporations will pursue. As many of you know, oftwominds.com was falsely labeled propaganda by the propaganda operation known as ProporNot back in 2016. The Washington Postsaw fit to promote ProporNot’s propaganda operation because it aligned with the newspaper’s view […]
How Much Longer Can We Get Away With It?
How Much Longer Can We Get Away With It? Alas, fakery isn’t actually a solution to fiscal/financial crisis.. This chart of “debt securities and loans”–i.e. total debt in the U.S. economy–is also a chart of the creation and distribution of new money, as the issuance of new debt is the mechanism in our financial system for […]
